Advances in medical education and practice
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Little is known about the impact of diabetes mellitus (DM) continuing education (CE) programs on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of primary healthcare physicians (PHPs) in the Arab world. Accordingly, we aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a diabetes CE program on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of PHPs in Aseer region, Saudi Arabia. ⋯ The CE program for PHPs was effective in addressing knowledge gap of PHPs and in improving their practices towards quality patient care.
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Communication skills education is still relatively new in some non-Western countries. Further, most evaluation research on communication skills education examines only short-term results. In our communication skills program in Qatar, we aimed to: 1) assess the impact of the communication skills course on participant skills application; 2) assess the length of time since course completion associated with participant skills application; and 3) assess participant gender or clinical position associated with participant skills application. ⋯ Participants reported agreement with response items about the impact of the course on their skills application. Participant gender did not play a significant role, but residents had lower scores than did fellows. Furthermore, most physicians (92%) were able to name something specific that they had learned from the course and were currently implementing in their practice. Positive outcomes of the course did not seem to diminish over time. Future research should identify whether observable communication behavior matches the self-reported behavior.
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Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has a critical impact on clinical education, and it has resulted in the widespread disruption of clinical assessment. Clinical mentors and students in all the health professions are working within the most troublesome of circumstances in the hospital-based educational settings. Medical educationists ought to concentrate on the health and the safety of the students and communities. ⋯ A key challenge for medical educators is to simulate the clinical encounters at this unprecedented time, and this emphasized the necessity of applying virtual simulation-based educational tools in clinical education. This commentary explores how COVID-19 has challenged medical education. It also has discussed the future implications and potencial challenges of incorporating simulation-based virtual learning technologies into the medical curriculum, for the future of clinical education, and students' or residents' competency evaluation.